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Bernice
Corner of Augusta and Oakley, built 1917
Palmyra (with a Municipal Device on the cartouche)
2530-2532 Kedzie Boulevard, built 1902
Roxana
2500 N Kedzie Boulevard, early 1900s
Sylvia
1000-1002 N Oakley, built around 1915.
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[John Morris/Chicago Patterns]
Handsome blue cottage with front gable and leaded glass windows at 2431 N. Rockwell, built in the late 1880s.
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Every year brings new buildings and the demolition of others–it’s the continuous cycle that transforms inanimate structures into the growing and evolving organism of a city. In times of wealth and prosperity the number of construction and demolition permits grow, and in times of recession they dwindle.
Last year this cycle repeated largely as it has in years past. But there were a few themes in the destruction of Chicago’s architectural heritage: late 19th century Worker’s Cottages, grand South Side homes, Italianate row houses, and a few sparkling Victorians on the North Side.
It wasn’t all losses in 2016–there were a few wins, particularly neglected or damaged churches that will live on through adaptive reuse.
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Milwaukee/Kimball/Diversey [John Morris/Chicago Patterns]
The beauty and lore of this avenue was captured over a century ago in a book by a Jefferson Park resident:
What Soho is to London this diagonal avenue is to the Garden City. By turns the Greek, Italian, German, Scandinavian, Russian, Lithuanian and Pole monopolize the street signs, the corner news-stands, the sidewalks and the cars, or proclaim to the passing nose one aspect of their national delicacies.
Every half-section line exhibits in its ganglia, as the crossing of the thoroughfares, a sharp-angled picturesque frontage, akin to Seven Dials or Five Points in their palmy days.
—Alfred Bull, amateur historian describing Milwaukee Avenue in 1911
In the first part of this series, we’ll look at the early history of Milwaukee Avenue, and follow it until the boom years of the 1920s. Next we’ll cover the Chicago School of architecture, and later, the transition to the Machine Age and Art Deco.
